Sunday, August 24, 2008

As AP noted, John McCain has said that he's not a flip-flopper and essentially said he hasn't changed his position on issues:

"In all due respect to my colleagues. They're drinking the Kool-Aid that somehow I have changed positions on the issues. All I can say is that we all grow. We all grow wiser. And we all refine our positions."

First of all: what kind of grammar is that? I think he left out a few words, like perhaps "if they think" between Aid and that. BTW, it should also be "with" all due respect, but perhaps I am just picking on the old guy who has trouble remembering stuff.

Secondly: Kool-Aid? Only thing I could think of related to Kool-Aid is Jonestown. If he really wanted to make a point, he could have said "drinking vodka," or "smoking the ganja." Once again, that old, old mind.

But anyway, he says we "refine our positions." Sorry, when you refine something you change it.

In 1999, during his first run for President, McCain supported the offshore drilling ban. In June of 2008, however, obviously playing to Americans pained by high gasoline prices, he calledfor an end to the ban.

Other flip-flops from the Report:

McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.

McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

McCain insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” McCain now believes the opposite.

He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.

At any rate, all this criticism of changing one's mind or flip-flopping started with atttacks on John Kerry. Yet, since when is it wrong to adjust one's thinking when someone receives new information?

However, it is interesting how conveniently these particular flip-flops play to the GOP base.

2 comments:

Amber in Albuquerque
said...

Easy dude. Yes, it's "with all due respect." The Kool-aid is a direct and now grossly overused, misused, trite, and a bunch of other adjectives metaphor for what Orwell called Groupthink. It's supposed to conjure images of Jonestown where a bunch of people actually died a really grisly death(so add insensitive to the above list of adjectives). As a metaphor for switching positions the extra words "if they think" aren't necessary. The Kool-aid is metaphorically that he has switched positions...he had to add that 'somehow' to soften the idea though.

Blah blah blah. All this is to say I got so distracted by you attacking McCain's grammar issues instead of his flip-flops that I almost skipped the rest of the post.

I really enjoy this blog and this post is a rare case of putting the cart before the horse. The criticism is meant to be constructive. Sometimes we all get caught up in the heat of battle. Make sure you're hitting the right target (because I'd like him metaphorically DOA in November).